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5 minutes ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

 

Hornwood Fell - Keres

 

In all seriousness though Doc the new HF is maybe not as impenetrable as your run of the mill dissonant black metal album (I suppose DSO are the flag bearers of that movement now) but I still found Keres to be a difficult and challenging listen. The heavy dissonance is not static, it comes and goes. First track I was just trying to get my bearings. I was kinda getting into the rythmic latter part of the 8 minute 2nd track but then that faded out and then they hit me with the dense and swirling 3rd track and nearly lost me. The little interlude in the middle which let me catch my breath actually saved me. 4th track started out a little rough but then again toward the end of the track I was starting to dig something they had going on and then of course it abruptly ended. Now I'm onto the 5th and final track which is as I suspected more of the same, which is to say a bit of a clusterfuck. Having trouble distinguishing one track from the next tbh but of course this is just a first impression. Probably a last impression as well. Everytime they shift into something I find interesting and accessible to focus on they yank it away from me and go all super disso. There's enough here that even I can see why someone like you might enjoy this Doc, (or Sweet FA) but at the end of the proverbial day they're just not musical enough for me. I'll stick to my low-brow knuckle-dragging shit that I can tap my foot to. But it was an interesting 44 minutes, I'm not at all sorry that I went for the ride.

Did you give the new Nur Run album a shot? It felt a bit clearer, maybe more accessible... Definitely a "fun" listen in my book. If you're in the mood, kinda thing.

https://pestproductions.bandcamp.com/album/among-those-waves

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45 minutes ago, NokturnalBoredom said:

Mercyful Fate "Don't Break the Oath"

I catch a lot of shit from my buddy for liking Mercyful Fate/King Diamond and I sorta get it, because the way that he sings in falsetto could be construed by most people as being a little gay, but you have to remember that Mercyful Fate/King's stage presence did a lot to inspire black metal, as did their lyrical subject matter. This is the reason why they're usually classified as at least being partially relevant to black metal despite really just being a classic heavy metal band from the infancy of metal's mainstreaming in the 80s.

I'll always like the two original Mercyful Fate studio albums. They really were black metal in lyrical tone, if not in sound, as black metal was just starting to be defined around that time. When I still wasted my time on Reddit, I would argue this sentiment a lot on there against new jack kids who think that they know everything because they listened to bands from the 2010s. Even George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher said that "Don't Break the Oath" is one of, if not his true favorite metal album of all time.

Turn the tables on your buddy and inform him that I said he's gay if he doesn't like it. Nobody with at least 2 or 3 brain cells thinks KD is gay because he sings in falsetto. Or Frankie Valli either for that mattter. 

Gets tedious reading the erroneous stream of consciousness ramblings of these new jack millennials who think that they know everything because they've bought a couple dozen albums from HHR.

 

 

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Varathron "Walpurgisnacht"

I like the Greek black metal sound. Granted this album has received criticism from people because it "is the best Rotting Christ album that Rotting Christ never made", but that sort of thing does not bother me. I'm a big fan of Rotting Christ, so when I read that in a review, I knew that I had to check Varathron out & this is my first outing with the band, for I have not listened to "His Majesty at the Swamp" but again, I hear good things.

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3 hours ago, Serpentboi1992 said:

Cro-Mags – In The Beginning | Metal Invader

This truly is a great album. Unfortunately, it's the only Cro-Mags album that I have at the moment because it's the only one that I could find. That one track "Two Hours" is pretty relevant to my life, because I always have to stop myself and think "Where do I want to be in two hours? Not sitting in a cell wondering why did I put myself here?"

I listen to a lot of hardcore in addition to metal. This one is one of my favorites out of all the hardcore albums that I own.

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On 11/19/2021 at 10:25 PM, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Hmmmm. Gotta be honest, even after all these years I'm still not entirely sure exactly what constitutes or defines post metal. I have a vague notion of mellow depressive shoegaziness. But let me take a stab at this. Your only 3 pm bands that matter will be...Isis, Neurosis, and the not mentioned Cult of Luna? I never really thought of Neurosis as post metal though I've already admitted to not being quite sure what that sub-genre even is. Tbh I only guessed Isis because you mentioned them in your post, wouldn't have come up with them on my own, I'm just not at all familiar with their music. If any of my 3 guesses are wrong, who did I not name? And even if my 3 are correct, who in your humble opinion would be the next 3 post metal bands on the list of the ones that matter?

Yeah, Neurosis, Isis and CUL. Neurosis just sound like Neurosis, but still get credited with having spearheaded what we now call post metal. It is an eye of the beholder kind of thing. I know it when I hear it-long, meandering songs with shifting atmospheres, slow builds and soft/loud dynamics.

When I first started dabbling around 2004, it was often called atmospheric sludge or atmospheric hardcore. IMO, it was Isis with Oceanic and developed to it's zenith with their album Panopticon followed by CUL's salvation that created what people refer to as post metal and then inspired so called post black with the likes of WITTR, Altar of Plagues and Agalloch to some extent and of course Deafheaven. 

The focus got overplayed with euphoric pretty sounds but it gets incorporated into textures that some bands use to good effect (Boris, later YOB).  But sometimes gets lost in navel gazing....there are a handful of post metal albums I love and a lot that make me see cross eyed and want to take a hammer and bash my head in if I listen too long. Red Sparowes and Alcest come to mind even though I can tolerate the pretty gazey stuff as a diversion for short periods of time. 

 

 

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3 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

But it was an interesting 44 minutes, I'm not at all sorry that I went for the ride.

And that's the most anyone could ask of you. A pretty good take on the album, actually. I just like the dissonant chaos more than you do.

At the other end of the spectrum, what do you think of the new DER WEG EINER FREIHEIT?

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4 hours ago, markm said:

Yeah, Neurosis, Isis and CUL. Neurosis just sound like Neurosis, but still get credited with having spearheaded what we now call post metal. It is an eye of the beholder kind of thing. I know it when I hear it-long, meandering songs with shifting atmospheres, slow builds and soft/loud dynamics.

When I first started dabbling around 2004, it was often called atmospheric sludge or atmospheric hardcore. IMO, it was Isis with Oceanic and developed to it's zenith with their album Panopticon followed by CUL's salvation that created what people refer to as post metal and then inspired so called post black with the likes of WITTR, Altar of Plagues and Agalloch to some extent and of course Deafheaven. 

The focus got overplayed with euphoric pretty sounds but it gets incorporated into textures that some bands use to good effect (Boris, later YOB).  But sometimes gets lost in navel gazing....there are a handful of post metal albums I love and a lot that make me see cross eyed and want to take a hammer and bash my head in if I listen too long. Red Sparowes and Alcest come to mind even though I can tolerate the pretty gazey stuff as a diversion for short periods of time. 

 

 

Two things: Why do you abbreviate Cult of Luna as CUL? Wouldn't logic dictate that you take the first letter of each word? So, CoL?

Second, to me I've always thought that referring to these kinds of bands as Posthardcore made a lot of sense. Not only because many of them came from the hardcorescene, but also because that was very reflective in the music. The vocals are the kind of bellowed roars very common in European and US HC, the riffs aren't the typical death metal power chords or one-string melodic lines of black metal, but usually somehthing more angular, or more airey and layered. And the drums play a lot with dynamics. So to me posthardcore bands just take the components of HC and move past them. I think it's hard to say that ISIS and Cult of Luna don't have more in common with hardcore than metal.

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5 hours ago, Sheol said:

Two things: Why do you abbreviate Cult of Luna as CUL? Wouldn't logic dictate that you take the first letter of each word? So, CoL?

Second, to me I've always thought that referring to these kinds of bands as Posthardcore made a lot of sense. Not only because many of them came from the hardcorescene, but also because that was very reflective in the music. The vocals are the kind of bellowed roars very common in European and US HC, the riffs aren't the typical death metal power chords or one-string melodic lines of black metal, but usually somehthing more angular, or more airey and layered. And the drums play a lot with dynamics. So to me posthardcore bands just take the components of HC and move past them. I think it's hard to say that ISIS and Cult of Luna don't have more in common with hardcore than metal.

Yup, there's a lot of hardcore in the wider "post-metal" sound, but "post-hardcore" is already kind of its own thing too. "Post-metal" might be a crappy label but I think we're stuck with it at this point. I wonder if/how it'll migrate in the future, I remember briefly hearing Tool called "post-metal" in the 90s.

____

NP:

Carcass - Torn Arteries   ...meh.  More engaging than the other reunion stuff IMO but still not something I can get into.

Worm - Foreverglade

Plebeian Grandstand - Rien Ne Suffit

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9 hours ago, Thatguy said:

And that's the most anyone could ask of you. A pretty good take on the album, actually. I just like the dissonant chaos more than you do.

At the other end of the spectrum, what do you think of the new DER WEG EINER FREIHEIT?

This one's much better, or at least it's a much easier listen for me because it's not what I would call excessively chaotic and it doesn't use dissonance as a weapon to make me feel like I'm on some kind of bad drugs and up is down and my world is spinning out of control. Best tracks here were the penultimate track, Gegen Das Licht and the closer Haven. I do like an album that finishes strong.

Now of course I'm sure you already know before I even say it that I'm slightly irritataed that they call this "black metal" because it's nothing of the sort. I'm sorry Doc, but this and black metal have nothing in common. Why do bands do that? Just call it avant-garde post metal and leave the black out of it. To me this actually sounds much more like what Mark (not you Doc, the other Mark) and Johan and those dudes call post metal/post hardcore.

But setting that one small but very important nit pick aside, musically I'll say this is pretty good Doc. I actually like the pretty parts the best but even during the more metallic parts it's alright because I can at least follow along with it, doesn't make me feel like I'm crazy or stupid or anything because I can't decipher it like those DSO bands generally do. But it's not something I'd buy you see because it doesn't sound "evil" or "filthy". Extreme metal needs to be one or the other or both ideally for me to consider it. And it's also not "riffy" which is another big negative in my book.

This is largely clean not filthy, and it's almost uplifting in spots, not angry and hateful. The dude does sound a lil' bit annoyed at times but he's not conveying true bone chilling, church burning hatefulness and evil the way I feel black metal vocalists should. He sounds more like he's pissed off they got his burger order wrong or a bird shit on his windshield on the way to work or something. So you see in that way it's not cathartic for me the way black metal is, which is something I really need Doc. Because black metal exorcises my inner demons allowing me to walk around with a smile on my face and to be the care-free happy-go-lucky guy that we all know and love.

 

13 hours ago, FatherAlabaster said:

Did you give the new Nur Run album a shot? It felt a bit clearer, maybe more accessible... Definitely a "fun" listen in my book. If you're in the mood, kinda thing.

https://pestproductions.bandcamp.com/album/among-those-waves

I did give it a shot oh patriarch of the white rock. Didn't make it all the way to the bitter end but I listened to about 3/4 of it before I gave up. I see it's our buddies the ED twins again. This must be a side project or something of theirs I guess. 

It was definitely somewhat easier to make sense of this album than the Hornywood album, in track 5 for a minute or two I was almost starting to sense a pattern that I could latch onto. But I can't say I found anything "fun" about this album.

Now this dude did sound legitimately angry, but I'm talking like unhinged mental institution angry, not regular sane person angry. And once again the levels of choas and dissonance on display here are simply beyond what my pea brain can comprehend or tolerate. Smarter men (and women of course) than I may be able to get something out of this kind of music and more power to them, it takes all kinds. But I just find it unsettling (not in a good way) like deep inside my guts, like it makes me feel like I have to take a shit or deliver a baby or something.

"Avant-garde" stuff like this is really closer to what I'd call noise than music. I don't say that to be confrontational or insulting or argumentative or anything, that's just my take, albeit a dismissive one. Personally I need my music to be in tune using standard time signatures (I've found 4/4 works quite well) and use regular notes and chords n shit that go together. Mismatched notes confuse me. Dissonant or atonal chaos (Doc has explained it to me but I can never remember the difference tbh) just doesn't appeal to me, it has the polar opposite effect.

NP: Ortus - Aus de Tiefe

 

35 minutes ago, FatherAlabaster said:

Yup, there's a lot of hardcore in the wider "post-metal" sound, but "post-hardcore" is already kind of its own thing too. "Post-metal" might be a crappy label but I think we're stuck with it at this point. I wonder if/how it'll migrate in the future, I remember briefly hearing Tool called "post-metal" in the 90s.

Haha I call Tool nu-metal and several of my friends who are pretty heavily into them get all bent out of shape over that. They don't want their beloved Maynard and Tool assosciated with an inferior sub-genre that they despise. But I just call 'em like I see 'em. Sounds like whiny nu-metal to me, just more "posty." They're the band that writes songs that build and build creating tension but never reaching a climax. I should coin a new sub-genre just for them, "blue balls rock"

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7 hours ago, Sheol said:

Two things: Why do you abbreviate Cult of Luna as CUL? Wouldn't logic dictate that you take the first letter of each word? So, CoL?

Second, to me I've always thought that referring to these kinds of bands as Posthardcore made a lot of sense. 

Yes, that would make much more sense. Well noted! Post hardcore works which would distinguish them from post black and so on. Except for all those instrumental post bands.....which are often as much prog as post in my mind and focus on the soaring melodies. Didn't Aaron Turner use the phrase thinking man's metal? Or metal for people who don't like metal and that's where things went off the rails for me. When you subtract the heavy parts then you just have this overblown glossy music. I'm sure that's why Turner disbanded Isis.

A big part of the appeal is the contrast between heavy music be it metal or hardcore with atmospheres not typically associated at the time in metal...of course now there are all kinds of atmospheric elements in metal and prog, etc. I still think the genre can be done effectively. But even CoL are running out of inventive ways of doing what they do, at least for me after,  Mariner.  

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3 hours ago, markm said:

Post hardcore works which would distinguish them from post black and so on

I have one "post-black" metal LP and it's not very good. I only keep it because it was a thoughtful gift from a family member who was trying to find me new music that I'd be into and saw the words "black metal" and figured that it would be up my alley. It's not horrible music, it's just not really interesting enough to make we want to listen to it repeatedly.

In case you're wondering, it's a band called No Sun Rises and the album is titled "Ascent//Decay". It's the whole Post-black metal/blackgaze thing that reminds me of hipster crap like Deafheaven that convinced a bunch of Williamsburg, Brooklyn gentrifier types that they too, were into black metal.

I do really like post-hardcore though: Jawbox, Husker Du, Rites of Spring, Dag Nasty, Embrace, Hot Water Music, Fugazi, etc. I have a decent amount of Post-Hardcore LPs from that era, I'm just not into the poppy stuff that was labeled as being "Post hardcore" in the 2000s save for At the Drive-In.

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1 hour ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

This one's much better, or at least it's a much easier listen for me because it's not what I would call excessively chaotic and it doesn't use dissonance as a weapon to make me feel like I'm on some kind of bad drugs and up is down and my world is spinning out of control. Best tracks here were the penultimate track, Gegen Das Licht and the closer Haven. I do like an album that finishes strong.

Now of course I'm sure you already know before I even say it that I'm slightly irritataed that they call this "black metal" because it's nothing of the sort. I'm sorry Doc, but this and black metal have nothing in common. Why do bands do that? Just call it avant-garde post metal and leave the black out of it. To me this actually sounds much more like what Mark (not you Doc, the other Mark) and Johan and those dudes call post metal/post hardcore.

But setting that one small but very important nit pick aside, musically I'll say this is pretty good Doc. I actually like the pretty parts the best but even during the more metallic parts it's alright because I can at least follow along with it, doesn't make me feel like I'm crazy or stupid or anything because I can't decipher it like those DSO bands generally do. But it's not something I'd buy you see because it doesn't sound "evil" or "filthy". Extreme metal needs to be one or the other or both ideally for me to consider it. And it's also not "riffy" which is another big negative in my book.

This is largely clean not filthy, and it's almost uplifting in spots, not angry and hateful. The dude does sound a lil' bit annoyed at times but he's not conveying true bone chilling, church burning hatefulness and evil the way I feel black metal vocalists should. He sounds more like he's pissed off they got his burger order wrong or a bird shit on his windshield on the way to work or something. So you see in that way it's not cathartic for me the way black metal is, which is something I really need Doc. Because black metal exorcises my inner demons allowing me to walk around with a smile on my face and to be the care-free happy-go-lucky guy that we all know and love.

 

I did give it a shot oh patriarch of the white rock. Didn't make it all the way to the bitter end but I listened to about 3/4 of it before I gave up. I see it's our buddies the ED twins again. This must be a side project or something of theirs I guess. 

It was definitely somewhat easier to make sense of this album than the Hornywood album, in track 5 for a minute or two I was almost starting to sense a pattern that I could latch onto. But I can't say I found anything "fun" about this album.

Now this dude did sound legitimately angry, but I'm talking like unhinged mental institution angry, not regular sane person angry. And once again the levels of choas and dissonance on display here are simply beyond what my pea brain can comprehend or tolerate. Smarter men (and women of course) than I may be able to get something out of this kind of music and more power to them, it takes all kinds. But I just find it unsettling (not in a good way) like deep inside my guts, like it makes me feel like I have to take a shit or deliver a baby or something.

"Avant-garde" stuff like this is really closer to what I'd call noise than music. I don't say that to be confrontational or insulting or argumentative or anything, that's just my take, albeit a dismissive one. Personally I need my music to be in tune using standard time signatures (I've found 4/4 works quite well) and use regular notes and chords n shit that go together. Mismatched notes confuse me. Dissonant or atonal chaos (Doc has explained it to me but I can never remember the difference tbh) just doesn't appeal to me, it has the polar opposite effect.

NP: Ortus - Aus de Tiefe

 

Haha I call Tool nu-metal and several of my friends who are pretty heavily into them get all bent out of shape over that. They don't want their beloved Maynard and Tool assosciated with an inferior sub-genre that they despise. But I just call 'em like I see 'em. Sounds like whiny nu-metal to me, just more "posty." They're the band that writes songs that build and build creating tension but never reaching a climax. I should coin a new sub-genre just for them, "blue balls rock"

Triggering Tool fans is a reliable source of entertainment. I think their first couple albums have a few great moments but overall I agree, they rarely get to the point. 

I don't think appreciating the more dissonant/angular/weird side of things has anything to do with intelligence or even musical knowledge, it's just a matter of taste. Some of my friends are classically trained, creative, utterly capable musicians who have no time for the meandering herky-jerky horseshit I spend most of my time with. I know I said this before, but I am a little surprised that you get turned off by a lot of this stuff, but get into Abyssal or some of those Blut Aus Nord albums. There's no value judgement attached to that from my end, just always curious what makes people tick.

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Johann Sebastian Bach - Kay Johannsen - [Organ Chorales from the Neumeister Collection - disc 1 #10] 

With Bach, unlike other classical music, I don't have to strain my ears, get frustrated, turn the stereo up, get my ear drums blown, turn the stereo down then stretch my ears and turn the volume up... and this is good. Severe tinnitus makes appreciation of very quiet classical music a bit challenging. 

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